Mozilla wants Facebook-like control over information and more than de-platforming

Karl Popper was right but I am not sure if I would apply fascism or the Nazis to all groups we disagree with and that is what happens now in our societies.
Everybody that has a different opinion today seems to be a fascist, a Nazi or a conspirator of some sort.

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Yep, i can relate to that. Just because i have my thoughts on, let’s say, this covid crisis, among others, which are not the thoughts of the majority, all of a sudden i’m a conspiracy theorist, according to my boss.

Both posted on Jan 7th, depending on which news you see you’ll likely only hear Edward Snowden…

  1. be against big tech in favor of free speech
  2. be against attacking reporters in favor of the press

Only without news bias is Snowden clear that free speech is not a partisan issue… and that it can’t be ethically optional for a country that wishes to be free.

As we see this play out far beyond Trump’s accounts i’m floored by how much FOSS is acting as a safety net for human rights. It’s always played that role across the globe but i’ve never seen it writ large so close to home. FOSS can’t save speech on it’s own but i’m incredibly proud that it enables us to hear Snowden through things like Tor and be challenged by people we may not always agree with.

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1347224002671108098
https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1347165721927802880

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There is ofcourse, also the comment @FriarDest made earlier on: (replace Twitter with fb)

Big tech can’t and won’t save free speech. That’s not their job. Their job is to sell your data to advertisers. Many seem to have forgotten this.
I can understand that Snowden used TOR and posted on Twitter, because that’s where the majority still is. (but should be moving out to other platforms, imho)
Come to think about it, there is no battle for control over digital speech. It’s rather a battle for control over the people who’d like to use digital platforms. (Again, selling those people to advertisers pays big).
If you have a FOSS platform, that advocates free speech (as in, everybody can speak their mind, regardless of what they say actually amounts to anything or not), wouldn’t that solve the problem?
Of course, keeping the lights on requires money, i know. But that could be solved too, without having to become a second fb. (with all it’s spying etc…)

Attacking reporters, while i can understand the action, is not done.
(I can understand in a way that people, who watch the main stream media, can get riled up when they hear what the news outlets have to say about somebody they very much care about . In this case, Trump. This refers back to what @Ulfnic earlier on said;

In this case, they only saw noise, not the signal.
Aggression towards the press or anybody is to be avoided at all times. It does nothing to help your cause, whatever it may be.
Unfortunately, aggression, physical or otherwise, towards the press is rampant.
Even where i live, independent media news outlets have been threatened with lawsuits, intended to cripple their workings.
Or to silence them completely. (Fortunatly, they won the cases).

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I agree that it is not big tech companies jobs to save free speech, but, IMHO, they definitely step WAY out of line when they take steps to censor those that don’t agree with their specific political views.

Many are ok with that because it’s Trump but they do that a lot and that’s definitely not ok.

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First of all. While people have a right to free speech. They don’t have the right to demand or even expect that a medium such as a social network give them a platform.
If anyone is using free speech to say something that I find truly offensive in my home I will trow them out and I’m fully in the right for doing that imo.
The social networks are the property of their owners and thus they have the right to determine what they do and don’t want on there.

Further than that in other parts of the world there are different rules. I’m Dutch and our constitution does have an article for free speech. However if you try to use that and in doing so violate another article in the constitution like for example article 1 which forbids all discrimination be prepared to face legal action because your free speech is not more important than another’s constitutional right to not be discriminated against.

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If you threw someone out of your home, do you believe no one should complain if they thought it was bad for you to do so?

They can complain all they want as long as they aren’t doing it from inside my home.
They have the right to complain but not the right to dictate where they do that.

I just think that free speech doesn’t mean you can say everything without consequence. You having the right to say something doesn’t mean I don’t have the right to determine that certain behavior is not welcome within my property.

Don’t feel like you need to read the whole thing, just pick a section if one’s worth reading.

“I keep whining and whining until I win” - Trump

Excuse the jab at Trump but If i’d summarise this thread, it’s just complaints. I think everyone I cited including myself aren’t seeking human rights laws applied to platforms though it’s hard to ignore how they’ve become what the phone and SMS used to be. Should phone companies be able to censor speech they dont like on their platforms?

I believe speech is a moral and societal ideal worth fighting for because without criticism, differences in opinion and the free exchange of ideas required for people to grow their faculties (requiring tons of mistakes)… societies begin exchanging educated agreement for mindless obedience… what used to be understanding becomes recitation… what was the protection of humanity becomes protection of protection. That’s a recipe for unraveling.

Why is it ok to kick someone out of your home but not your social network?

A home (or home server :stuck_out_tongue: ) should serve it’s users. It’s a safe place for rest, contemplation and experimentation (sort of like how early life was theorized to be born in tidal pools). If society is the inhale, home is the exhale. You shouldn’t have people in your home who don’t compliment that.

An IRC with 5,000 members should serve it’s users. There’s a large element of home because people think alike, it’s a place to relax and be among friends. Though at that size it’s unavoidably also a mini part of society which can’t intellectually breath without a bit of flexibility. The occupants aren’t served well without some compromise that scales with the size of their exposure.

A social network with 100s of millions of accounts should serve it’s users. As this represents a massive chunk of society, suppression of speech becomes suppression of diverse thought within the society itself. No one is forcing a platform to promote a healthy society but failing to do so fails the users by extension.

Lastly a browser should serve it’s users. Just like the firmware that powers our computer screens, it’s a window into all of the above requiring flexibility in the absolute else that difference in opinion can get traded for a non-diverse singular opinion.

There’s an ocean of exceptions here but that’s my foundational idea.

Why is speech above all human rights? (imho)

It’s extremely fragile so it must be preserved first

There are enumarable reasons I can give why someone’s speech is oppressing my rights. meaning=(context * speech) I can change the meaning of anything someone says to be oppressive by engineering the context. For example I can re-invent what a word means in common language by digging into history, I can say immutable birth characteristics change the context, I could even say the mere presence of speech conveys negative context.

Speech is remarkably fragile to context hacking and the only safety net that doesn’t crush speech is critical speech.

There are no rights without free speech

Without dialog, criticism, diversity of opinion and the opportunity to grow one’s faculties the ability for people to make sense becomes lost. It makes them easy to mislead with context hacking, they’re not prompted to think and their mistakes go untested and uncorrected. En’ mass that’s not a public that can maintain human rights for very long.

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We’ll have to disagree on the free speech being more important than other constitutional rights.
To me it just isn’t. That you however don’t share my opinion on this is your right.
I didn’t say you can’t speak about anything and everything, but if you speak about something that you know is hurtful or even illegal according to the laws of the land you must not be surprised if there are going to be consequences.

The in my home thing was to me a nice analogy. To me it doesn’t matter if it’s someone house, a bar or a social network. These are places that are owned by private individuals and corporations. That to me implies that as long as they comply with the law that they can dictate what is and what isn’t permissible on their property.

That does not mean I agree with all of their decisions, but they have the right to make those choices.

Take a public space and make it private and there we have it.
In the future everything could be owned by some kind of company or super corporation, not an ideal world.
That virtual spaces or social networks are private is already a bad sign and additionally it serves as an excuse to exclude parts of the population to enter or to be part of it.
If you do not use them already then you are sometimes already out to be in contact with family or friends because everybody expects you to sign into some of those services.

Of course it is company owned so you should not complain and nobody reads the terms of use anyway. Come on. That is exactly the problem and how they get away with it.

Why should we complain about Microsoft then. It does not send or sell your data, you already agreed to it by buying a Windows machine.
Microsoft here only is an example. Take Google or Gmail etc. Those companies are not even European and we all depend on them, also on state level and in education.

This to me, is a slippery slope. When is someting deemed hurtful? The way things are right now, everything can be interpreted as hurtful. The laws of the land are there to protect freedoms, that’s true. But that doesn’t mean they’re not up for debate.
When free speech is shackled, there is no more debate. So rules can and will be made that supress free speech even more. Because it’s deemed illegal to even debate those new rules, you can go to jail, because it’s been written into law.
Just look at China, for instance. Everything you say about the cccp, needs to be positive by default. Criticism lands you in jail. (if you’re lucky).
If we don’t keep our eyes open, we’ll end up the same way.
Example: A Big Move to Ban Realtor 'Hate Speech.' At Work. Anywhere. 24/7. | RealClearInvestigations
(quote: NAR’s decision, allowing any member of the public to file a complaint, has alarmed other real estate agents, and also some legal and ethics experts, who say the hate speech ban’s vagueness is an invitation to censor controversial political opinions, especially on race and gender. While that’s not the association’s stated intention, the skeptics say their fears are justified by the hyperactive “cancel culture” online that has jettisoned hapless workers for posting “all lives matter” and objecting to gay marriage.

“The dam has broken and other organizations will look at this,” predicted Robert Föehl, a professor of business ethics and business law at Ohio University." end quote".
This is very troubling. If we continue down this path, communication will cease to excist, because everything can be interpreted as harmfull, hatespeech, racist, etc…

The way i see this: your home is yours. You can do with it and within what you want. (although, living in Europe, that’s not the case any more).
You can kick anybody you wan’t, out of your home. (not looking at possible legal issues etc… just the principle).
Social networks (as soon as they are sponsored by advertisers and the like) will kick anybody that goes against the wishes of the advertisers. It’s as simple as that.
You’re the product. They don’t serve you, they serve the allmighty dollar/euro/yen/whatever.
For any social network to really serve it’s users, it will need to be funded by those users. Only then will it fully serve it’s users. A value for value model, if you wish.
In my eyes, the big ones definitly don’t represent a massive chunk of society in regards to ideas, thought, etc…
It only looks at them as a dollar sign. Play nice with our rules, or get out. (which is not easy to do, because their behavioural scientists already figured out how to keep you hooked). Keep generating cash for us within the boundaries we have set. (which they can do, because of money, not free speech).

To have a platform that supports free speech, you’d have to launch one yourself, or find one that is funded by the users themselves. Or doesn’t rely on any corporate funding what so ever.
Only than will you have a chance at free speech and a safe haven for the good and the bad in this world.

Note that I said " that you know is hurtful or even illegal according to the laws of the land" There is no ambiguity there. If you know that what your saying is going be hurtful it is deliberate and you shouldn’t be surprised to encounter some backlash. Whether that is from the government, your fellow citizens or a group you just hurt.

While free speech is important, to me it doesn’t make sense that one article in a constitution is more important than all others. Even if it was than it should logically be article 1 of a constitution and for me that means the right not to be discriminated against. Freedom of speech (technically the right to freely express your opinion) is article 7 and it does contain a caveat that statements that break other constitutional rights are not covered by this.

For example hate speech generally can be categorized as discrimination and thus would not be protected under article 7 because it breaks article 1. That means that it can occur that you will have to justify what you have said before a judge. This is dependent on having an judicial apparatus independent of the government of course. If you don’t have that, you have a real problem that should be addressed first, preferably by non-violent means.

As for the China example. I have no knowledge of their constitution and if they even have a free speech article.

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I count myself lucky you’re here because not enough debate goes on these days and I need people to keep me in check. :slight_smile:

A few thoughts i’m working through…

If what is hurtful or hate speech is defined by the person being hurt, would it not allow people to suppress critical speech merely by becoming highly sensitive to anything they disagree with? It seems like an incentive for high levels of intolerance because it enables someone to get big tech and Government to remove the speech of their opposition.

As for the law, I think it’s only as fair as the people creating it. I could list very compelling examples from 3rd World countries but just in the U.S. many states have embraced medical marijuana that’s been illegal for decades and still is at the national level. The people it helps owe their thanks to scientists and stores breaking the law every day.

If I say whatever is illegal is bad, then what I think is bad changes every time I drive to another city, state or country. A greater good is served by following the law even when it makes no sense (within reason) but I don’t think it defines what right and wrong is.

I miss netscape

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This just occured to me today…

Is google.com a greater social good than duckduckgo.com?

Google engages in down-ranking publishers they deem less authoritative according to a recent 2020 study by RealClearPolitics. If news curation is more important than news neutrality shouldn’t it follow that duckduckgo.com is less-good because it aggregates results that include news that hasn’t been filtered?

Similarly Element and Telegram (to name a few) have produced platforms where they can’t curate/censor information on their own networks where-as Facebook can. Does this lack of news curation position Facebook as a greater social good over Matrix and Telegram?

I’m experimenting with these ideas because they’ll impact where people in FOSS congregate, what they recommend and how they write their software. Possibly in future how they’ll be allowed to write their software. I just want to make sure I have my ducks in a row.

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I am with you on that one. i am currently looking for a Browser that Respect my Freedoms.

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I would consider myself a “Free-speech absolutist”. Allow public discourse to expose bad ideas and allow uncensored ideas, to dissect the arguments. The bad ideas will just shrivel in the sun and eventually just go away. I think it is far better to expose them than to just push them down into the depths.

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This isn’t the first time Mozilla has stifled free speech. They got rid of their CEO for donating to a campaign years before he was the CEO. This puts me into a rough place. Mozilla is basically the last non Chromium browser, but they really seem to want to be more of an SJW than a provider of a browser that respects their users.

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